


Now 'Til Eternity

by SquirrelNo2



Series: Instrument of Chaos [13]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Backstory, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29810964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquirrelNo2/pseuds/SquirrelNo2
Summary: After everything Caleb and Ava have put Julie and her friends through, after dealing with the fallout of the time-travelling Instrument's power what feels like a hundred times over, Julie is ready for her magical truce with Caleb to be done. She's ready to move on. She's absolutely ready to have both malicious ghosts out of her life for good.The problem is figuring out how to do that.
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Flynn/Carrie Wilson, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters
Series: Instrument of Chaos [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953958
Comments: 106
Kudos: 40





	1. Ghost Revenge on the Schedule

**Author's Note:**

> So it's not when I thought it would be up, but it is up! First chapter out of thirty. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh  
> I'm gonna try something new, and update this every other day - the days I don't update this, I'll be doing Nightingale instead, because i want to keep momentum going on it and also because this one feels like... a bigger deal than previous fics in the series. It's a bit of a last minute lore dump, with at least three flashback scenes and a time travel sequence, but I wanted to finally answer some questions about both the magic in this world and who Caleb and Ava are beyond just what they've done to Julie and co. That's right! I will finally tell you all why Caleb and Ava hate each other so much. You're welcome.

Flynn snuck up on Carrie and flung her arm around Carrie’s shoulders. Carrie looked sideways at her, unimpressed.

“You’ve spent way too much time around Julie’s band,” she said flatly.

“I love you, too,” Flynn said. “Coming over tonight?”

“Is it yours or Julie’s?” Carrie asked.

“Does the answer change, or…”

“Yes, I’m coming, where am I going, though?” Carrie said, rolling her eyes.

“Uh…” Flynn tried to remember whose house they’d been at last. Hers, she was pretty sure. “Julie’s?”

“I love how you don’t know,” Carrie muttered. “You know, everybody else is planning college trips right now, not ghost revenge.”

“Ugh, that sounds terrible,” Flynn said. “Glad we’ve got ghost revenge on the schedule.”

Carrie frowned, like she wanted to say something, but she just reached up and held Flynn’s hand. When they got to Carrie’s next class, Flynn kept hold of Carrie’s hand and spun her around like a ballroom dancer, trying to make her smile. It worked, but now Flynn had a new mission.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“Fine,” Carrie said. “Just sometimes… ghost revenge is not how I thought senior year would go.”

“You don’t have to be involved,” Flynn said.

“Except I do,” Carrie said. “It’s ok, Flynn. Go to class.”

Flynn was pretty sure there was more her girlfriend wanted to say, but she could wait until they were alone to push. She squeezed Carrie’s hand and left for her own class.

“Julie!”

At this point, over a year since Julie and the Phantoms had first performed, Julie was no longer startled when one of the boys showed up at school. She was, however, getting really good at a flat, unimpressed glare.

“You couldn’t wait like twenty minutes for me to get home?” she asked Luke. Reggie and Alex were with him, though apparently Willie had bowed out of whatever crazy idea they had.

“No, we missed you!” Reggie said dramatically. Julie raised her eyebrows at Alex.

“I’m being the responsible one,” he said. Julie tilted her chin down so it looked like her eyebrows were going even higher. Alex wrinkled his nose.

“I wanted to hang out, too,” he said.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Julie teased.

“Oh, what – no! It’s not bad! I didn’t –“ Alex sighed as the others laughed. “Julie, you’re amazing, but you’re also terrible.”

Julie smiled at him as she closed her locker and started to walk out of the school.

“We have a week,” she said after a moment. She looked over at the guys to see them exchanging subdued glances. Reggie caught her looking and smiled at her. Julie tried to smile back.

“You’re still sure you wanna go through with this?” Alex said. “I mean, we know a lot more about your powers, but we don’t even have a plan.”

“That’s why we’re meeting tonight,” Julie reminded him, wilfully ignoring how many of their previous planning meetings had turned up basically nothing. “It’s either Caleb comes for us or we go after him, and after what he and Ava did to my mom, I want them both to know they need to leave us alone for good.”

“I know,” Alex said. “Julie, we all know. But it’s… kind of like we haven’t done anything else.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” Julie snapped. The boys stopped walking, and she stopped, too, biting down on her words until she could get them out without lashing out at her band. “Music? When I can’t stop thinking about how so many of our songs only exist because my mom died? School? When Caleb and Ava have hurt every one of my friends that I see here, not to mention all of you?”

She looked down, unable to look them in the eyes.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled,” she said, pulling her phone away from her ear.

“No, hey,” Luke said. “It’s ok.” He pulled her into his arms and she went willingly, though she couldn’t hug him back in public without getting weirder looks than usual. Alex rubbed her back gently. Julie looked over Luke’s shoulder at Reggie, who was still watching her with wide, worried eyes.

“I really am sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to be,” Reggie said. “I get it.”

Julie reached her hand out, and Reggie took it, wrapping his other arm around Luke’s waist.

“We should go,” Alex said after a moment. “Probably better to talk about this stuff at home.”

With a sniffle – Julie had absolutely _not_ been crying, but maybe she’d been a little leaky in the face – she pulled away from her boys. Reggie brushed a light kiss against her cheek as Luke inspected her face like he was trying to figure out the best plan of attack against her sadness.

“You want us to meet you there or ride with you?” Luke asked.

“Stay,” Julie said. Much as she tried to hide it, she didn’t like letting her friends out of her sight any more than they did her. Her boyfriends smiled at her, and Luke reached for Julie’s hand. Alex shoved his hands in his pockets and walked on Julie’s other side, like they were protecting her from the world.

It was cute. Especially given that Julie was really the one who protected them, in a lot of ways. She looked around Luke and caught Reggie’s eye, and he gave her a playful wink.

“I love you,” Reggie said, leaning his head on Luke.

“Thanks,” said Alex on Julie’s other side. “You know, that means a lot, Reg.”

Julie laughed and nudged Alex with her elbow. He grinned back at her.

They only had a week until the year-long truce with Caleb was up, but that was ok. They could do this. They had each other.


	2. Who Doesn't Like Attention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie brings the time travel. As it turns out, her dad brings the information.

When Carrie got to Julie’s house, she found Julie and the ghosts in the studio. Julie was listlessly improvising, and as Carrie looked around the room she saw that Luke and Reggie were curled up together on the couch like puppies, their eyes open and trained on Julie. Alex was on the floor in front of the couch, twirling a drumstick, with Willie beside him.

“Wow, this looks depressing,” Carrie said.

“Hey, Carrie,” Julie said, standing up immediately. “Flynn’s in the bathroom. Nick’s on his way.”

Julie headed for the couch, nudging her boyfriends aside so she could sit. Carrie sat on one of the chairs, waiting. This whole revenge plot thing was Julie’s business, really, and Carrie wasn’t about to be the one to start it.

Even if the Instrument had given her a _lot_ of ideas.

As if Julie could read her mind – honestly, if it wasn’t for the fact that they’d established over the last few months Julie’s powers basically _only_ worked on ghosts, Carrie might have thought she had – Julie asked, “We could use the Instrument, couldn’t we?”

Carrie reached into her bag. Like always, the Instrument was the first thing her hand met. She pulled it out, not missing the way Reggie shrank back into Luke’s arms or the equally unsettling way Julie leaned forward.

God, they were all so messed up.

“It wants me to,” she said. Flynn came out of the bathroom, spotting Carrie and the Instrument immediately and frowning like she’d figured out what they were talking about. She settled gingerly on the arm of the chair as Carrie kept talking. “But how long ago did Caleb die? Because that could get _really_ bad.”

She’d thought about it, when she was still new to this. She’d meant her threat to Caleb, on the beach in the world where she’d never been born. But after Julie’s mom, after the way the Instrument had wormed its way into her head and kept trying to make Carrie do things with it – she wanted to keep the timeline the same. Partly out of self-protection. Partly out of sheer spite. _Nobody_ told Carrie what to do, not even a weird time travel device with vaguely telepathic powers.

Julie sat back.

“So it’s an option,” she said. “But not a good one.”

“A terrible one,” Flynn cut in. “Those are the words you’re looking for, anything with _that_ involved is a terrible plan.” Julie laughed softly, nodding.

That, Carrie wouldn’t argue with.

There was an alien sense of disappointment inside her. The Instrument had been hoping she’d take them all back, destroy Caleb before he ever hurt them, make yet another chaotic timeline.

Carrie shoved the Instrument back in her bag with a vicious sense of satisfaction. She didn’t know if fighting Caleb and Ava would fix anything for her, but it would at least make Carrie feel a lot better to have her comeuppance against the people who had put her in the Instrument’s path.

Which brought up another point.

“We’re going after Ava, too, right?” Carrie said. “I think she’ll keep trying for the Instrument, and if I’m not using it, there’s a good chance it’ll decide to go back to her again.”

It was practically pouting. Carrie set her bag on the floor and wrapped an arm around Flynn’s waist, as a quiet, petty display of power over the Instrument.

“Absolutely,” Julie said. “She tried to use my mom against us, too. That spell that hurt Nick’s mom, that was her idea. Neither of them should get away with this.”

Julie was a little scary when she talked like that. But that was what Carrie had wanted to hear.

“Hey,” came Nick’s voice. Willie waved at him, and Nick joined them on the floor near Carrie. The tradition of leaving one chair open continued. Carrie wondered sometimes if they had ever thought about it, if they left it for one person in particular, or if they’d all just accidentally stumbled into this habit.

“Any news?” Nick asked.

“Just that the Instrument is a last resort,” Julie said. “Which I kind of figured, which is why I put off asking. What if…”

“The truce deal worked before,” Flynn said. “What if we make it longer?”

“I don’t even know what I did,” Julie said. “And it’s not like that’s something I can practice on any of them.”

It was hard to practice fighting ghosts when the only ghosts around were people Julie didn’t want to hurt. Carrie found it annoying, because it hindered their progress, but she also understood.

“Well, we know I can protect us,” Flynn said. “And if Caleb or Ava comes after us I can do that _psshhew_ thing across the room.”

Carrie tried not to laugh at the noise Flynn made. Nick did laugh. Flynn nudged him with her foot.

“They have to listen to what Julie says,” Alex piped up. “At least some things. So we can tell them to leave us alone?”

“It’ll wear off,” Julie said. “Everything does. And after all the stuff Caleb does to people…”

“Didn’t we talk about trying to make them move on?” Luke spoke up. “Like, forever ago. When Willie didn’t have his soul back.”

“We don’t even know _our_ unfinished business,” Reggie said. “And all Ava had to offer was that he likes attention. Who doesn’t like attention?”

They all awkwardly sat in silence for a moment.

“We need to know how he died,” Flynn said. “In movies, the ghost’s unfinished business is always about how they died, right?”

“Yeah, but we didn’t move on when we played the Orpheum,” Luke pointed out.

“It’s still a place to start,” Flynn said. “So how did he die?” She pulled out her phone, but didn’t get very far in her search.

“Didn’t he drown doing one of those chain escape things? Like the tank full of water, and he’s all tied up, and then he just died onstage in front of everybody?”

Carrie stared at Reggie. Nick, Willie, Julie, and Flynn stared at Reggie. Luke snapped his fingers excitedly.

“Yeah, that’s right!” Alex said.

“Why do you know that?” Carrie asked.

“Bobby,” the three boys in the band chorused. Carrie opened her mouth, then closed it.

“He loved those, like, unsolved mystery things. All the creepy ghost stories and awful deaths and stuff,” Reggie said.

“Yeah, he’d tell us about them every rehearsal,” Luke said.

“He hates those now,” Carrie said quietly. “I guess when you get featured on some you don’t find it as cool.”

“Wait, why would he – oh.” Reggie’s shoulders slumped. Carrie tucked her hair behind her ear, avoiding the boys’ eyes.

“We should talk to him,” Julie said. “See if he remembers anything else about Caleb.”

“It’s probably been a long time since he thought about it,” Carrie said. “But I’ll call him.”

He picked up in three rings.

“Hey, baby, what’s up?” he asked. Carrie put it on speaker.

“Weird question, but… I’m trying to help Julie and her band with something.”

“Oh,” her dad said, his voice already taking on that different, crackly tone it did whenever Julie’s band came up. Mostly, the boys had decided to pretend they didn’t know Carrie’s dad. Carrie didn’t think any of them knew what to make of her dad’s apology all those months ago. Some days, she wasn’t sure her dad knew what to make of it. “How – uh, how can I help?”

“They said you were really into weird mysteries and crimes as a kid,” Carrie said. “Do you – do you remember anything about a magician named Caleb Covington?”

Her dad was silent for a long moment.

“I do,” he said. “And not just because of that.”

The ghosts erupted in shouts of confusion, and Julie and Flynn hissed at them all to be quiet. Nick sat up on his knees, peering at the phone like he could see what Carrie’s dad was thinking.

“Because you went to the club, once, when I was little,” Carrie said. Everyone stared at her. “Uh – it might be nothing.”

“I can tell you what happened,” her dad said. “Just – look, I don’t remember a lot about that other timeline. But I remember Caleb was bad news. Carrie, are you and your friends safe?”

Carrie swallowed.

“We’re trying to be,” she said.

Her dad sucked in a breath in that way that usually meant he was holding back a swear word.

“Ok,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, a little more view into what's been going on - most of their planning sessions have ended up with them talking in circles or discussing things Flynn and Julie learned to do. More detail on that later, but honestly these kids never wanted to plot against people and they're finding themselves a little unprepared, hence the vagueness in this chapter's proceedings.  
> Good thing they remembered that plan from forever ago, right? Nothing could possibly go wrong. This will be easy. Obviously.  
> Next chapter is the first flashback chapter! That's right, it's Trevor's perspective of a night that happened about eleven years ago. Finally answering that question you were asking waaaay back in I think the first Flarrie fic.


	3. Some Might Say Wiser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One night, in the past, featuring Trevor, Carrie, some ghosts, and quite a few sparkles.

_Twelve years ago_

Trevor adjusted his grip on Carrie’s hand. Her mother was still out for the evening, and the last person he’d hired to watch her had shouted at Carrie and scared her. So, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he had brought her with him to the club where his manager was waiting for him.

They’d been staying in the hotel that housed the club for a few days, a retreat paid for by the record label that clearly catered more to the stars who played up their publicity stunts than the ones who escorted small children around with them wherever they went – so at least Carrie’s mother had been having a great time.

It was yet another rub-elbows, meet-people kind of night. Supposedly, Trevor’s manager and the others who’d be there all had some kind of in with the club owner. His manager had assured him Carrie’s presence wouldn’t be a problem, but that was about all Trevor knew about the place.

A member of the hotel staff showed him and Carrie down the hall, opening the unnecessarily grand double doors for them.

“Daddy, I want stairs like that in my room!” Carrie whispered, staring gleefully at the grand, curved staircase leading down to the ballroom floor.

“I think that’s a little big for a room, baby,” Trevor said with a laugh. “Stick close, all right?”

“Look at the lady!” Carrie said, clearly not listening. “She’s in the ceiling!”

Aerialists hung from two hoops overhead, performing as though people were watching even though most of the club-goers seemed to ignore them. Typical, Trevor thought to himself. Once you got rich enough, it didn’t matter that you were a performer, too – show business always ended up background noise.

He wondered if the aerialists were looking for work. He knew a couple more avant-garde artists who could probably give the women better exposure, and maybe even better pay.

“Come on, Carrie,” Trevor said, hoisting her up onto his hip. She giggled and tried to lean back, imitating the aerialists. “Daddy’s got some people to talk to.”

“You always have people to talk to,” Carrie said. “Do I get to talk to them?”

Those were the worst questions.

“Maybe,” he said, planting a kiss on her hairline before heading down the stairs. “We’ll see.”

“Trevor Wilson!” came a voice as Trevor reached the bottom of the stairs. Trevor turned to see a man approaching, wearing a purple suit like it was an awards show and not just a regular night out. Trevor, being the kind of man who’d had to be forcibly dragged out of his all-jeans-all-the-time phase when his career was just getting started, was instantly uneasy.

“Sorry, have we met?” Trevor asked, not because the man knew his name, but because his face looked familiar. Other parties and meetings, perhaps? Maybe an awards show? If this man upped his fashion game for awards shows from “purple velvet suit” there was an even chance he was completely unrecognisable at them.

“No, but I do know all about you,” the man said. “You’ve had quite the career, and if I may say…” He drew close and lowered his voice. “Bill and I are old friends, so I know a little about how you got your start. You really _have_ made something out of tragedy.”

Trevor took a step back. It was one thing for his manager, Bill, to talk like that. Agents, record label executives, they knew. They’d known since the start. It wasn’t such a stretch to imagine that word got around, here in the tight-knit upper echelons of Hollywood society.

But in front of his daughter?

The man’s eyes flicked to Carrie, and he seemed to realise his miscalculation.

“Caleb Covington,” he said with a charming grin. Trevor adjusted his grip on Carrie to shake Caleb’s hand automatically, but the name struck a chord.

Caleb Covington was the name of that magician who’d died performing an escape from a tank of water. March, 1948, he’d gotten his chains partially undone and then, as far as anyone could tell, stopped. There had been a lot of urban legends about what happened after, and it had been long enough since Trevor was interested in that kind of thing that he couldn’t remember what the truth was. Some said his assistant had died shortly after. Some said it was the reporter who wrote about his death. Some said the theatre manager had killed him.

Nobody had ever said Caleb Covington was alive and well and running a nightclub looking exactly the same as he had sixty-ish years ago.

Trevor realised that Caleb was watching him, like he’d said something and was waiting for an answer.

“Sorry, could you repeat that?” Trevor managed.

“I said I thought you’d like the show,” Caleb said. “We have a bit of a theme here – did anyone tell you this club’s name?”

Trevor had assumed it would be named after the hotel. He hadn’t bothered to ask, or pay attention.

“Welcome, Mr Wilson, to the Hollywood Ghost Club,” Caleb said. “I admit, I find myself fascinated by the afterlife… Something about the promise of getting that last chance at redemption from those you’ve lost.”

And _that_ was the kind of thing Bill had said when Trevor was young and grieving and screwed up.

“I’ve stopped looking for redemption,” Trevor said quietly. “I can’t get it. Especially not from the dead. Better to help the people I haven’t failed, yet.”

Caleb seemed genuinely surprised by that answer.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’m here for a meeting,” Trevor said. He pushed past Caleb.

Could this man be a ghost? That was absolutely crazy. More realistic was that he was a manipulator, yet another rich jerk who knew Trevor’s past and thought he could use Trevor to suit his own needs. But Trevor was a lot older and sadder – some might say wiser, but Trevor knew himself – and he wasn’t about to go down any self-destructive rabbit holes with Carrie around.

“Daddy, his suit looked soft, do you think he’d let me pet it?” Carrie whispered.

“Baby, if you stay nice and quiet for me while I talk to these people really quickly, I will get you a nice soft suit of your own,” Trevor said. He actually had no idea if people made tiny little suits for five-year-olds, at least in the shade of pink he _knew_ Carrie would request, but what was the point of money if it couldn’t buy you a ridiculous outfit for your kindergartner?

“I think Julie would like it here,” Carrie informed her dad matter-of-factly. “And Fin.”

“Flynn, your new friend?” Trevor checked. Carrie nodded, which he felt more than saw as she’d leaned in close. “I bet they would, but you know, we can make it just as sparkly and nice at home.”

“Sparkles are nice,” Carrie agreed, just as Trevor finally spotted Bill. Time to hear the latest pitch, make his excuses, and go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to have way more manipulative Caleb but I got distracted by baby Carrie, and honestly I want to give you all more fluff anyway. There's a lot of subtext and dramatic irony here, anyway, so that's fun. I'm really hoping I didn't contradict what I said about when the girls met Flynn because I think I said it was around now but I have no idea when I said that so it's very hard to check. Anyway, I happen to like the idea of baby Carrie mispronouncing Flynn's name while talking about how much she'd like this big sparkly place. I think it's a concept we deserve.  
> (Why 1948 for Caleb's death, you may ask? Well, if I make him die in the 20s like some people do, I end up spending way too long infodumping about early jazz club culture and potentially fall down a rabbit hole where I talk about the preponderance of nightclubs that catered to a white crowd while hiring Black performers, because this is the kind of thing I know about. Not that this wasn't also a problem in the 40's, but I know less about the 40's on a whole and so there is less risk of me rambling in-story. You can still imagine that he was working in the 20's, if you like, as he's certainly old enough when dead.)  
> So, Trevor has just told this story, possibly with less detail on the Carrie dialogue. Next time you all get to find out how exactly the kids feel about that revelation.


	4. An Image to Maintain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The kids take in their new knowledge, and try to figure out what to do with it.

When Carrie’s dad finished, nobody spoke for a little bit. Alex looked around, hoping somebody would talk. It wasn’t as though he could say anything to Bobby. And what would he say? He didn’t even know how he felt about the idea that Caleb hadn’t lured Bobby in with vague promises of seeing Alex and the others again.

 _Good job, Bobby,_ Alex might say. Or, _Does that mean you’re not even sorry?_

Neither one was fair.

“I guess it’s not as chilling when you say it out loud,” Bobby said finally. “But – But that’s when he died, 1948, and how. And he definitely had his sights set on me. I think if – if he knew the rest of Sunset Curve was out there as ghosts he wouldn’t have let me go so easily.”

Alex remembered something Reggie and Willie had told him, how they’d seen that sad adult version of Luke in Caleb’s club. He thought that maybe, it was just that Bobby had somebody else to cling to, and if it weren’t for Carrie, Caleb might never have given up at all.

Yet another thing he couldn’t say to Bobby, and probably shouldn’t say to anybody at all.

“Thank you,” Carrie said finally. Alex eyed her warily, wondering what was on her mind. Had she caught it, too? That she might have been the thing that kept her dad safe from Caleb?

“Sorry I can’t be of more help,” Bobby said quietly.

“No, you – you helped,” Carrie said. She looked up at Julie, and Alex did too. Julie was sitting deathly still. Alex couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “We’re going to talk some stuff over now, Dad, but thank you.”

“Please be careful,” Bobby said. “All of you.”

Carrie rolled her eyes, but Alex could see the familiar tension in her shoulders.

“We know, Dad,” she said, and she hung up. Then she made a face like she was screaming silently at her phone.

“So we know how Caleb died,” Reggie spoke up. “That’s good.”

“But that doesn’t tell us anything about how to make him move on,” Julie snapped. “That was barely about Caleb at all.” She groaned.

“I don’t remember that at all,” Carrie murmured. “I know I went to that hotel when I was little. I didn’t know – I didn’t recognise anything.”

“We might as well have just looked Caleb up on the internet,” Julie grumbled.

“It told us a little,” Alex said. “I mean, Caleb gives up easier than we thought, right?”

“He didn’t exactly give up on any of us,” Luke pointed out.

“I don’t think he could afford to,” Willie said quietly. He leaned his head on Alex’s shoulder, poking his finger through the coffee table so the tip stuck out the bottom. He sighed, pulling his hand out and laying it flat on the table. “He thought it was you guys that were powerful, so he wasn’t about to let you go. Then he found out the magic was Julie’s. But mostly, if people – ghosts or lifers, if they say no to Caleb he doesn’t push. He might show back up if something bad happens, for all I know he might _make_ bad things happen. But a good con artist knows when to back off, right?”

“We already knew he’s a good con artist,” Julie said.

“Why do you think his trick failed?” Reggie asked. “Like Bobby – Trevor – Carrie’s dad said, it was like he just stopped mid-trick. And there were rumours people murdered him. Do you think if we found that out, it would help?”

“How do we know Caleb doesn’t know?” Alex spoke up. “I mean, if he was murdered, isn’t there a good chance he saw who did it?”

Nobody seemed to have an answer.

“Well, this got us absolutely nowhere,” Julie said. “Good talk.”

“Julie,” Reggie said quietly.

“Has Caleb ever put on a magic show?” Nick spoke up.

“He’s a magician,” Carrie said flatly.

“No, I mean, since he died,” Nick said. “In the Hollywood Ghost Club.”

Everyone looked at Willie, who shook his head slowly.

“He does some tricks, but all ghost stuff,” he said. “And the flight, which I’m actually not sure if it’s magic or ghost stuff or just really well-hidden wires.”

“He can do _what_?” Flynn interrupted. Carrie shushed her. Flynn flicked her on the ear in retaliation.

“So there’s a chance he hasn’t done a real magic show since he died,” Nick said. “That could be something.”

“It is _really_ weird that he’s known for doing something in life that he never does in death,” Luke said. “I mean, you’d think magic was his passion, right?”

Alex considered pointing out the fact that not everyone was Luke, but Luke was at least right that it was weird.

“What are we going to do, force Caleb to put on a magic show?” Flynn asked.

“We could,” Julie said softly. “I don’t want to, but…”

“We’ll keep that as a last resort,” Luke said quietly.

Carrie stood up abruptly.

“I should get home,” she said. “Homework.”

“Carrie –“ Flynn said, reaching out for her girlfriend. Carrie smiled at her. Alex was about ninety percent sure it was a fake smile.

“We can’t all dedicate our lives to ghost revenge,” she said. She picked up her phone and kissed Flynn on the forehead before sweeping out of the studio with all the drama she could muster. Flynn watched her go with narrowed eyes.

“She is freaked out, and she is not going to talk to me,” Flynn announced. Nick stood up without comment.

“Thanks,” Flynn said. Nick fist-bumped her before he left.

“Carrie!” Nick called. She was on her way to the bus stop when he caught up with her.

“What are you doing here?” Carrie asked. “Don’t you have a war council to get back to?”

“Honestly, from the sound of it, I think we’re low on ideas again,” Nick said. “Flynn’s worried about you. So am I.”

“I’m fine,” Carrie said. “Perfect, actually, as always.”

Nick laughed. Carrie definitely hadn’t meant it as a joke, but also they’d been through enough together that there was no way she expected him to buy that.

Carrie glowered at him.

“Leave it alone, Nick, you’re not my dad and you’re not my therapist. Go tell Flynn I’m fine.”

“Is it your dad you’re thinking about?” Nick asked, because he was never going to be the kind of person who was mean, but he still knew how to find the chinks in people’s armour. It was like a weird, messed-up bonding experience between them.

“Nick, we’re not dating, you don’t need to pretend to care,” Carrie snapped. Nick waited. Carrie rolled her eyes again, this time with an air of defeat.

“Did that make you feel better?” he asked.

“Yes,” Carrie said sulkily. “Look, just – it’s like I said. I didn’t know I’d literally been to Caleb’s club before. I was kind of trying to forget about the fact that Dad probably went there.”

“I guess we know where that picture of you as a five-year-old in a pink velvet suit comes from,” Nick offered.

“Ugh, I _hate_ that. Caleb gave five-year-old me style tips. And a velvet suit? That was _so cool_ until now. That jerk ruins everything.”

Nick grinned at Carrie, and she half-smiled back at him.

“How many times do you think he’s reached into our lives, Nick?” Carrie asked. “Do you think – I mean, Ava was doing all that time travel stuff for years. And the story is she gave people the choice to change things back. Was – was that original world somebody else’s nightmare world?”

Nick took a second, trying to think what kind of truth wouldn’t upset her worse.

“You know, I don’t think we’ll ever know,” Nick said. “Unless we wanted to track Ava down, I guess, Julie said Ava kept a bunch of notes, but I think we have bigger concerns than that when it comes to finding Ava. Anyway, Ava gave everybody the choice. So they picked a world. And maybe it was a sad world, maybe it was a hard choice, but either they got to forget because Ava changed things back alone, or they remember and they know why they picked the new timeline. So I don’t think that’s our problem.”

Carrie frowned pensively.

“That sounds kind of mean, doesn’t it?” Nick asked.

“No,” Carrie said. “You’re right, we don’t know those people, and they made their own choices. It’s just… The Instrument gets you thinking about all the moments that could change things. Sometimes they’re small. I don’t like the idea that I could owe any of my life to Caleb.”

“We all kind of owe life as it is now to him, on that level,” Nick said. “But considering it just seems to make his life worse in the end whenever we win, I don’t think he wants to take credit.”

“Yeah,” Carrie said. “I just – I already owe a lot to my dad. People see Trevor Wilson’s daughter. I wish I could pretend I made myself.”

“Oh, no, you’re definitely all you in the end,” Nick said. “You’re definitely one-of-a-kind.”

Carrie eyed him suspiciously.

“Don’t think I can’t tell that’s not really a compliment,” she said. Then she tossed her hair haughtily. “But you’re right. I’m unique, and I’m spectacular. I also have to catch that bus, so goodbye.”

Nick laughed as the bus pulled up.

“Tell Flynn thanks,” Carrie said over her shoulder. “But like. Tell her I said something insulting and then make it seem like you had to read between the lines for it.”

“Sure, Carrie,” Nick said. “I’m sure Flynn, of all people, wouldn’t see through that.”

“That’s not the _point_ , Nick, I have an image to maintain,” Carrie said. Then she was on the bus. Nick shook his head fondly and headed back to Julie’s house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to sleep now because i have the work schedule from hell but here is a chapter presented with minimal commentary! I also am not sure what's coming next but I think it's Julie attempting to continue the planning session.


	5. A Really Simple Metaphor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie has an idea. Flynn has questions.

Everyone else had gone home or wandered off to do something else, but Flynn and Julie stayed out in the studio. It had become a habit, this late-night magic practice, every so often testing spells out on each other until Flynn went home at the end of the night half-asleep from exhaustion.

Some of the things they’d tested were knowledge-based, or finding out who their powers worked on and in what way. Flynn could make a friend see a ghost they couldn’t normally see, but it had to be a ghost she had some sort of relationship to – this meant even club ghosts, maybe because she cared about them as Willie’s friends, but hadn’t meant the one unaffiliated ghost Dante had dragged in that one time. Julie couldn’t make ghosts visible, but she had figured out how to see new ghosts, and had been working on controlling that invisibility trick of hers.

Tonight, though, they were just playing with those flashes of light. It was hard for Flynn when she didn’t have somebody there, maybe because she only did it to protect her friends. Julie was better at it, maybe because of practice. Flynn wasn’t entirely sure how bright lights that pushed people around or put up shields related to death stuff, but Julie was always a little too single-minded in these sessions for Flynn to ask.

Finally, Flynn moved just a second too slow, and got slammed back into the couch.

“Are you ok?” Julie asked.

“Fine,” Flynn said. It was a good thing this couch was soft, but Julie hadn’t hit her hard or anything. “We should probably stop for now, though.”

“Yeah,” Julie said reluctantly. She sat next to Flynn, and Flynn wrapped an arm around Julie’s shoulders. “I just wish Carrie’s dad said something that was actually _useful_.”

Oh, great, they were still on that. Flynn pondered her possible options. None of them were great, given how focused Julie had been lately and how unhelpful Flynn’s possible answers were.

“I mean, it’s a piece, right?” Flynn said. “A piece of the past. If we stick enough pieces together, even if we’re missing stuff, we can still see the… wait, is jigsaw puzzle where I’m going with this? It feels like where I’m going but that feels like a really simple metaphor.”

“A piece of the past,” Julie murmured. She sat up straighter and turned to Flynn. Her face was practically aglow with excitement. “Willie was dead when you met him, right?”

“He was dead when you met him, too,” Flynn reminded her. She had _no idea_ where Julie was going with this.

“In the past, Flynn,” Julie said. “He already knew Caleb.”

“You’re not serious,” Flynn said. “You cannot be.”

“He’s the first person to come to Caleb of the club ghosts we know,” Julie said. “Willie introduced both Dante and Genevieve to Caleb, he’s been dead for forever. He has to know more about Caleb. He knew Ava’s name, back when none of us had met her and she and Caleb would never have worked together.”

“I know, just… Look, if I had decades of trauma to unpack after being manipulated and used by essentially the leader of a ghost cult? Maybe I wouldn’t want my best friends asking me to relive it.”

Julie frowned for a second, like that hadn’t occurred to her, but she shook her head.

“This is probably our best chance, Flynn,” Julie said. “And maybe – maybe it’ll help Willie. You know, talking about your pain.”

“I think that’s better for grief than trauma,” Flynn said, which wasn’t so much something she knew as something she had a vague hunch about. Still, wasn’t it possible to retraumatise people? And Flynn wasn’t exactly sure Willie was de-traumatised in the first place, considering it had taken him a while to get back into the swing of group hugs after that last time he forgot everybody. Alex had moped around for _weeks_.

“Flynn, I don’t exactly have any other ideas,” Julie said. “Look, if you do, let me know, but Willie’s the most likely person to know things about Caleb.”

“If he did, wouldn’t he have told us?” Flynn asked.

“Maybe he doesn’t know what he knows!” Julie said. “And fine, maybe I’m a little desperate. But if anybody wants Caleb gone the way I do, it’s gotta be Willie, right?”

Flynn couldn’t argue with that.

“We’re still left with Ava, no matter how much we learn about Caleb,” she said instead, because it had been bothering her. “I mean, sure, she doesn’t have _magic_ and the scariest thing she could do is currently in my girlfriend’s custody, but also that just gives her motivation to try and get it back again.”

“If we take care of Caleb, Ava’s easier to fight,” Julie said. “And I think if we made it hard enough for her, there’s a good chance she’d leave, and not come back.”

Another point Flynn couldn’t argue with, though it unsettled her for reasons she couldn’t quite name. Her phone buzzed before she could try to voice those reasons.

“Is it your mom?” Julie asked as Flynn checked. “Time to go?”

“No, it’s just a college recruiting email,” Flynn said. “Please. As though I’d go to a music school that doesn’t even recognise hip-hop beyond _one_ elective they offer _sometimes_. I have self-respect! My work is _important_ , dang it. Might as well not study music and do my own thing, for all the good classical would do me.”

It did make her think of what Carrie had said that afternoon, though.

“Does it ever feel weird that we’re seniors and we’re out here plotting ghost revenge instead of applying to colleges or planning gap years or whatever?” Flynn asked. “I mean, you should be getting ready for another show, plotting a post-graduation tour across the country or something. People are starving for Julie and the Phantoms content.”

“Kind of hard to make content, or think about anything normal at all,” Julie said. That was fair. It just also made Flynn sad.

“Is that why you haven’t let me schedule any shows lately?” Flynn asked. “The year truce ends, and you’re not sure if you’ll be able to do any shows anymore?”

Julie didn’t answer, but the look on her face was all Flynn needed.

“Julie,” Flynn said, turning towards her best friend. “Tell me you don’t think you’re going to die.”

“I don’t,” Julie said simply. “But I need Caleb out of my life, and until he’s gone I don’t think any of us are going to get much chance to do anything else.”

“And when it’s over, we put on a show?” Flynn asked. Julie smiled faintly.

“Biggest one yet,” she promised. “Tomorrow – tomorrow will you help me ask Willie about how he met Caleb?”

Flynn still didn’t like it. But Julie was right, it was their only real lead.

“Ok,” she said. “Help, like, stand next to you with a thumbs-up, or draft a couple options for you to say because you have no idea how to ask without sounding like a terrible friend?”

Julie thought for a minute.

“Honestly, kind of both,” she said, sounding both amused and horrified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, trying to come up with something Flynn can say about college emails that sounds like a rant she might have had often, giving her a rant I definitely never had in high school but absolutely would go off about nowadays. Seriously. Hip-hop is its own extant art culture and deserves the kind of respect in higher learning institutions it never gets. To truly respect the culture, higher learning institutions would also need a structural overhaul, but they're overdue for those anyway so who cares, am I right? Let's just do that all at once!  
> (they said Flynn was a DJ and had her rap once in a dream and I just. RAN with it. Flynn's fully in the hip-hop scene now, folks, she's probably learned from OG artists like she deserves because I said so.) (look I don't know much but I know enough to know I want Flynn to know more than me about hip-hop. I have passions I came to late in life and Flynn has the ability to actually pursue this information and skillset in ways I can't, let me project, ok) (This has become a really long aside about my Flynn-as-a-hip-hop-artist headcanon) (ask me sometime about my thoughts about the boys being from the nineties when the hip-hop scene was super different and far less mainstream and the conversations they might have with Flynn about it)  
> In other news, the "people are starving for content" thing is absolutely a meta-level joke, you're all welcome. We're all dying here, even Flynn apparently.  
> Next time, Julie brings up her idea with Willie. A couple other people also have requests for Julie and Willie.


	6. A Pretty Good Revenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willie has a couple conversations, none of which achieve a satisfactory conclusion, and he doesn't even get the chance to mourn this lack of satisfaction.

Willie was skating near the beach, pretending he hadn’t noticed Alex show up a few minutes ago. His boyfriend was absolutely ogling him, and it made Willie very happy. He tried to make sure he flipped his hair extra attractively whenever he stopped to adjust his helmet, which he _may_ have been doing unnecessarily often.

Finally, he landed his latest trick to his satisfaction. He turned and waved at Alex.

“You were showing off,” Alex said as Willie flopped down beside him.

“Did you like it?” Willie said, playfully bumping his shoulder into Alex.

“It’s you,” Alex said, like that answered everything. “Come on, Julie’s going to be home from school soon.”

“Right,” Willie said. “She’s… been kind of serious lately. I mean, I guess we all have been, but…”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “I know Reggie and Luke are trying to talk to her. I bet Flynn is, too.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, tense in the way that usually heralded an anxiety spiral. Willie stood, helping Alex up.

“She’s a smart kid,” Willie said, even though Julie was just about the age he’d died at. Time wasn’t real. “And she’s got a lot of people in her corner.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “And it’s not really fair to be weird about her getting a little aggressive. I _really_ want to take Caleb down after everything he did to you and Julie and everyone.”

Willie smiled. It was nice that Alex wanted to defend him.

“Don’t you?” Alex asked shrewdly, eyeing Willie like he could see through him.

“I’m not really a revenge kind of guy,” Willie said. “I’ve got way more than Caleb ever wanted me to have, and he’s got none of the things he wants. That’s a pretty good revenge by my standards.”

They poofed back home. Inside the studio, Julie was pacing, looking nervous.

“Willie!” she exclaimed. Willie took an involuntary step back, and Julie winced sympathetically. “Willlie,” she said again, this time softer. “I have a question.”

“Ok?” Willie said. Julie was wringing her hands, which was not exactly a usual Julie gesture, and he was a little worried about the kind of question she might have in mind.

“How – I mean, first of all, you’ve been around a long time, right?”

“I guess,” Willie said. Time was a funny thing, when you’d been a ghost for a while, especially since last year was the first time in a while he’d really paid attention to lifers beyond recognising him as a backdrop to existence. He still felt like a teenager, fresh out of high school, in most ways, but he also knew how long he’d been around, and he’d noticed his experience often left him as the voice of reason among his friends.

“How – how long?” Julie asked. Willie frowned thoughtfully, trying to count.

“I think it was seventy-eight,” he said. Alex choked on air, which was especially funny because he would have had to breathe for that to happen.

“Seriously?” Julie asked, staring at him.

“Not that old, in the grand ghost scheme of things,” Willie pointed out. “Fuego died in the sixties.” He did _not_ say that Caleb had been around for the Jazz Age because Caleb was a touchy subject with all of them, Willie himself included.

“Yeah, but – That’s a long time alone,” Julie said quietly. Alex took Willie’s hand.

Willie hadn’t been alone, or at least that was his knee-jerk response. But he knew what she meant.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it was… a long time to not really count on anybody but me and Caleb.”

Alex’s hand tightened around Willie’s. Julie frowned, like she was getting ready to do something unpleasant.

“Willie?”

Everyone turned at the new voice. It was Genevieve, looking around nervously. She’d never really been in the studio before.

“Can I help you? Is something wrong?” Julie asked as soon as she could focus on Genevieve. Willie, a little on edge after thinking about his early days in death, could only look her over, trying to imagine what she was here for. They’d met up a few times, but always in places that weren’t quite ideal for either of them – Willie didn’t want to meet any of his friends from the club in a place Caleb might find them. The last thing he wanted was to get anyone in trouble.

“I mean, it’s fine now,” Genevieve said. “But in three days I wouldn’t hold out much hope, unless you all have a plan.”

Willie swallowed. It was a fact they’d been avoiding, that the ghosts at the club were also protected by Julie’s truce. When the year was up, it wasn’t just Willie’s friends here that were in trouble. It was also the ghosts he’d known before – the ones he’d put in that position in the first place by introducing them to Caleb.

“We have… pieces of a plan,” Julie said, with a glance at Willie. “But I don’t know how well we’ll manage it in time.”

Genevieve nodded solemnly.

“I hate to ask this of you,” she said quietly. “You’re all too young for these… war councils. But could we talk this over? Could the club count on you to help us when Caleb gets his bite back?”

“Of course,” Julie said.

“Whatever we can do, Genevieve,” Willie said quietly. “We could probably talk it out right now?”

He glanced at Julie for permission, and she nodded.

“We should have done it sooner,” Julie said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Genevieve shook her head.

“I’d be worried if you all were _good_ at planning this kind of thing,” she said wryly. “I’ll tell a handful of the others. Thank you.”

“Great,” Julie said when Genevieve had gone. “More to worry about. More I don’t know what to do about.”

“Hey,” Willie said quietly, reaching out to her. Julie pouted, but she let Willie and Alex surround her in a group hug. “It’s not all your responsibility. Yeah, you’ve got magic, it’s useful. But nobody here is going to let you do this alone. Caleb is as much my problem as yours.”

Julie just rested her head on Willie’s shoulder, the hand she’d rested on his back clenched tightly in his shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, there is MORE shenanigan happening. The shenanigan-ing continues next time, with the outcome of these club ghost war councils, but for now I'm just gonna post because I have 15 minutes until the end of my self-imposed deadline and it's definitely already tomorrow for the vast majority of people in the world.


End file.
